My collection of football shirts

Monday, 3 November 2014

Colombia probably came to most people's attention during this years World Cup. Everyone knew they had Falcao but when he was ruled out of the World Cup most people were quick to diminish Colombia's chances. Of course they were never going to win it but a good style of football to watch captured the hearts of many and one player shone under the limelight. That player was James Rodriguez who later signed for Real Madrid for £61m because of his performances at the World Cup. That also being one of the main reasons I bought this shirt and that it looks nice.

Warrior started making football shirts around 2 seasons ago now having signed a multi million pound deal with Liverpool. Since then Warrior have been used by other teams to design their kits such as Sevilla and now this season Porto have jumped on the bandwagon. Warrior seem to put some thought into their kits and have a different variety of kits compared to the boring Adidas and Nike templates but whether that is a good or bad thing I'll leave that up to you to decide.

This was picked up from the ever so reputable Classic Football Shirts. I needed a new white shirt for my 5 a-side football team and this one looked the best for me. Not much more to say about the shirt.

Trinidad and Tobago came to most people's attention at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Trinidad and Tobago beat Bahrain 2-1 on aggregate in a World Cup qualifier playoff and became the country with the lowest ever population to reach a World Cup. Whilst at the 2006 World Cup they did not score a single goal but did manage a 0-0 draw against Sweden to give them 1 point before going out in the group stages but just getting to a World Cup is a big achievement for a country like Trinidad and Tobago. Against England they lost 2-0 thanks to goals from Steven Gerrard and Peter Crouch although Crouch pulled the Trinidad and Tobago's players dreadlocks to reach over him to head it in.

One player during the World Cup who had a lot of media attention on him was Chris Birchall. Chris Birchall was in fact a white person born in England and played for Port Vale at the time. He has since played for LA Galaxy with David Beckham and now still plays in the MLS for Columbus Crew. Birchall was eligible for Trinidad and Tobago because his Mum was born in the country. It was widely thought that Birchall was the first ever white player to play for Trinidad and Tobago but during the 1980s a man named Stephen Hart who managed Canada as well also played for them despite being white.

This shirt in 2006 was in fact the best selling football shirt in Scotland. This was because one of the strikers that played for Trinidad and Tobago was Jason Scotland who played for St Johnstone at the time. This led to Irn Bru using Jason Scotland as their advertising campaign with the slogan 'Scotland's going to the world cup'. Trinidad and Tobago have had some good strikers recently with the likes of Dwight Yorke, Kenwyne Jones and Jason Scotland.

Russell Latapy which is the name on the back of the shirt was also a big star for Trinidad and Tobago. He played a lot of time in Scotland at clubs such as Rangers, Hibernian, Falkirk and Dundee United but also played in Portugal for a bit with clubs which were Academica, Porto and Boavista. He ended up managing the squad in 2009 until 2011 but did not fair well as Trinidad and Tobago did not qualify for the World Cup this time.